Summary: All Third-Day Stories 

Neifile, queen of the third day, awakens the others at dawn and leads them along a path carpeted with grass and flowers to a palace about two miles to the west. The spacious, elegant palace has a walled garden filled with flowers, fruit trees, and many kinds of animals. The delightful songs of birds fill the sweetly scented air. At the center of the garden is a splendid fountain surrounded by a lush lawn.

That afternoon the ten companions gather in the garden for the next round of stories. The day’s stories are about people who use their own efforts to achieve their desires or find things they have lost. Filostrato begins with the tale of a handsome young peasant whose efforts lead to a job in a convent, as a gardener and as the lover of the nuns. Pampinea and the others follow with more tales about resourceful people.

Summary of Selected Story: Third Day, Ninth Story

Neifile tells the story of Gilette of Narbonne, the daughter of a physician who serves in the household of the Count of Roussillon. Gilette is brought up with Bertrand, the count’s son, and falls in love with him at a very young age. Gilette is driven to despair when the count dies and Bertrand, the new count, has to join the king in Paris. Gilette’s father dies and leaves Gilette a fortune, but she turns down all her suitors because of Bertrand. However, she can’t follow Bertrand to Paris without causing a scandal.

Gilette hears that the king is ill and realizes that this is her chance. She studies the king’s condition and consults her father’s notes and her own experience. Then she travels to Paris and offers to cure the king in return for the husband of her choice. Gilette’s cure does work, and the king gives Bertrand to Gilette in marriage.

Bertrand cannot refuse the king, but he considers his new wife beneath him and refuses to have anything to do with her. Bertrand goes off to Florence. Gilette stays at Roussillon and keeps busy putting the estate back in order. Soon she is loved by all the tenants and neighbors, but she delegates her duties to others and goes to Florence to find her husband.

In Florence, Gilette learns that Count Bertrand is in love with a poor young woman. Gilette strikes a bargain with the girl’s mother. In return for money and jewels, the mother agrees to let Gilette pretend to be Count Bertrand’s lover. Gilette deceives Bertrand, makes love to her husband, and becomes pregnant. Count Bertrand returns to Roussillon. After giving birth to twin sons who are the image of Bertrand, Gilette returns to Roussillon and presents the boys to their father. Bertrand recognizes Gilette as his wife and acknowledges his children. From that time on, Bertrand loves and esteems Gilette.

Summary: Conclusion of the Third Day

After the final story ends, Queen Neifile hands the crown over to Filostrato, who announces that the next day’s stories will be about people whose love ended unhappily. After music and dancing, Filostrato asks Lauretta to sing. Lauretta performs a song of her own composition about the sorrow of being forsaken by her love.

Analysis: Third Day

Neifile, the queen of the third day, is a forceful and energetic woman who embodies the topic of the day: people who achieve their desires by their own efforts. Neifile displays her energy by getting the whole company up at dawn and leading them to a new palace, where everything awaits their pleasure, including a delightful walled garden.

Neifile’s walled garden is as rich in symbolic meaning as it is in life forms. The walled garden symbolizes paradise on earth as well as the states of perfection and innocence. In this particular garden, the collections of animals and plants are an allusion to the Garden of Eden, and the fountain is an allusion to the fountain of the water of life, a feature of heaven, according to the Book of Revelation. The walls shut out the sin and evil of the outside world and create a world of purity. By bringing her companions to the garden, Neifile removes them further from the world of plague-ridden Florence, separating them from misery and death.

Queen Neifile is also the narrator of the ninth story of the third day, a tale that perhaps reflects Neifile’s wishes. Gilette, the story’s main character, resembles Neifile in her intelligence, independence of action, determination, and self-confidence. The main obstacle that Gilette must overcome is that of class: Count Bertrand is far above her in social status. Another obstacle is being a woman: She can’t follow Bertrand to Paris without compromising her reputation. Gilette’s intelligence leads her to hatch her plot to cure the king, and her self-confidence helps her go through with the plan. In the remainder of the story, Gilette works to overcome her biggest obstacle: her husband’s prejudices. Because Gilette resembles Neifile in character and Neifile is telling the story, the implication is that having a loving and loyal husband is also Neifile’s deepest desire. It is also possible that Neifile has experienced class discrimination in matters of love.

Gilette is a woman in love, but she is also a woman with power. Much of her power comes from her fortune, which allows her to travel to Paris and be admitted to the king’s presence. Wealth gives Gilette the means to persuade the mother of Bertrand’s young lover to let Gilette take the lover’s place. In addition to wealth, Gilette has the power of persuasion. She makes daring moves, such as talking her way into the king’s presence and dramatically presenting her newborn twins to her husband. Gilette is one of the best-known examples in literature of the powerful romantic heroine who takes control of her own love life. Her story is the source for Shakespeare’s play All’s Well That Ends Well.

The third day ends with the choice of ruler and topic for the next day, a pattern that is now well established. The king for the fourth day, Filostrato, announces that the topic will be love that does not end well, a hint about Filostrato’s personal history. Lauretta then performs one of her compositions, a lament about a lover who has forsaken her, which echoes the idea of ill-fated love. Lauretta’s song is an emotional bridge between the happy endings of the third day and the tragedies of the day to come.